Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Extraordinary life of respected GP
One of the county’s best known and respected GPS who championed healthy living in retirement has died aged 91.
Dr Ken Dawes was a member of the University of Kent’s medical practice and later spent many years giving health advice to the over 60s.
His favourite past-time was croquet, joining what is now Canterbury Croquet Club and becoming its chairman.
He died in the William Harvey Hospital on January 28, shortly after a fall at his home in Hatch Lane, Chartham Hatch. But he had an extraordinary life, including serving as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Hong Kong and Korea with a mobile unit similar to that made famous in the 1970s/80s American black comedy M.A.S.H.
Dr Dawes had ambitions to be a doctor from an early age and attended Durham University Medical School.
His first post was as an orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. While he was having a lateevening coffee with colleagues in the surgical ward, a night nurse came in and Ken offered to see her home, which led to romance and marriage to his first wife Lilla.
After National Service he became a locum before being appointed a general practice assistant in Wallsend-on-tyne and, soon after, a principal assistant and eventually a partner. Later he and a partner responded to a British Medical Journal article claiming that Scottish patients visited their
GPS more often than the English ones. They argued that it was flawed which resulted in a Ministry of Health officer inviting them to discuss the issue. Ken went and learned that the officer wanted to employ nurses in general practice which led to him being invited to lecture to Royal College of General Practitioners’ audiences.
In 1970 he was invited by the Ministry of Health to become a senior research officer at Kent
University but soon decided that it was not what he wanted and became a Kent University GP instead.
When he retired he lectured on how to remain healthy in retirement across the south-east for many years.
His first wife, Lilla, died suddenly in 1996 from an aortic aneurism.
In 1998 he married Ann Prior, a practice nurse at Kent University.
He joined the newly-formed Chartham Hatch Croquet Club and later, as its chairman, helped plan the club’s move to Polo Farm and its development into Canterbury Croquet Club. He continued playing until a year before his death.
He leaves his wife, Ann, and two sons, four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren by his first wife.
His funeral will be at 11.20am on Thursday, March 5, at Barham Crematorium. Family flowers only but donations can be sent to the British Heart Foundation or Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance Trust, c/o CW Lyons and Son Ltd, 17, Military Road, Canterbury. An inquest into Dr Dawes’s death is to be held at the Archbishop’s Palace, Maidstone, on April 9.